What Am I Doing

[tinhuviel]

I'm listening to the Gothic genius mix on iTunes and attempting to proof The Blood Crown. I've learned that 8-10 pages is my limit before my eyes begin to cross and my belly turns into a knot. I'm just not good at all at reading my own material. I know I have it to do...twice...but I don't wanna. The manuscript is 11,722 and I'm averaging about

Comments

[waterdawg]

Proofreading for me is easy - writing no way....at least not a novel.

[booraven22]

Revisions for me come in two ways, first: line editing so a sentence flows better, adjusting a scene so it flows better etc.

The second is the hard one. It involves sacrificing good scenes because they stop the action. Or cutting a ridiculously long exposition scene. Or changing the ending because it was unsatisfactory. Usually I end up rewriting stuff because I did it without the muse's input. It's like spaghetti, sometimes you throw it against the wall to see if it sticks.

The major re-write I just did? Works better. But it was also because I decided to take a free standing story and make it part of a trilogy. In a bigger universe.

You are LUCKY that you can write the way you do. I have a tendency to OVERWRITE a scene, talk it to death and bore the shit out of the reader.

I guess it just depends on what serves the story best. I'm hoping this next book doesn't need as much massaging as the first one did. Of course that started as a plot bunny scene that exploded into a book. :)

[tinhuviel]

I wish I were more like you, or we could reach a happy medium and feed off one another's specialties because I tend to skip descriptive scenes altogether and get right down to the characters. I've been told I should be a screenwriter.

[booraven22]

Girl, you and I both write like screenwriters. When I read your stories, I can see the movie unfolding in my head.

There's a scene late in my story that takes place in a dungeon like setting and I read it out loud to the husbeast. He got queasy from the descriptions, which made me happy. :)

[falkenna]

Don't know about Booraven, but as for me, it just means you can hear them more clearly -- I have to keep listening over several sessions of the same scene to get it right! (Sometimes not so much, though.)